


I don't know the way back home (come and find me)

by Elisexyz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (...I mean. sort of.), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, F/M, Rescue, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 18:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Normally, the two of them lead separate lives: (...)Today, though, he’s spent the past few hours following her around and trying to get her to talk to him, for some reason. Jemma, whose life has been proceedingverywell without him in it, thank you very much, reacted by dodging every attempt under the assumption that whatever he needed he’d get from someone else.But apparently not, because here they are, standing alone in her lab, and she’s run out of excuses.





	I don't know the way back home (come and find me)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Tumblr prompt: ["I’m an asshole, shoot me." + Biospecialist](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/post/178827690239/is-it-okay-to-ask-for-im-an-asshole-shoot-me).

“Oh, _alright_ ,” Jemma snaps, even before checking who it is that followed her into the lab. “What is it that you want?”

As expected, Ward is standing by the entrance, and at her outburst he grins slightly, because never let it be said that he makes it easy for anybody to suppress the urge to stab him with the first tool they can grab and leave him there to agonize.

Normally, the two of them lead separate lives: not only Jemma isn’t as often sent on missions outside of the base these days, but Coulson decided to follow a very sensible ‘Keep Ward As Far Away From The Team As Possible’ policy that makes so that their supposedly reformed traitor only works with agents that never had to deal with him personally before the Uprising.

The most that Jemma has seen of him has been glimpses in the halls and his figure in the infirmary and/or lab – depending on whether there was alien contamination involved or not – after a mission gone wrong, but even then she’s rarely the one to treat him.

 _Today_ , though, he’s spent the past few hours following her around and trying to get her to talk to him, for some reason. Jemma, whose life has been proceeding _very_ well without him in it, thank you very much, reacted by dodging every attempt under the assumption that whatever he needed he’d get from someone else.

But apparently not, because here they are, standing alone in her lab, and she’s run out of excuses.

“To talk,” he explains. “If you are done running away from me, that is,” he adds, a note of amusement in his voice.

“I _wasn’t_ —” Jemma protests, raising her voice before realizing that losing her cool is probably only going to make this more entertaining for him. “Forgive me if I am not exactly _eager_ to spend some quality time with _you_ of all people,” she finally says, crossing her arms.

“Apology accepted,” Ward replies, nonchalantly. “Now that that’s out of the way—” He takes a few steps towards her, smiling broadly. “—I’m here to tell you that all _this_ is not real, it’s in your head and you are hooked to a machine right now.”

Jemma blinks. She stares at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to— well, to say something that makes _sense_ , for example, or to give away that he’s drunk out of his mind.

“Was there some mission that I don’t know of?” she finally asks, carefully. “Are you on heavy pain medication or—or maybe just _drunk_? _This_ is what you’ve been following me around all day for?”

“Yes to the last one, and I assure you I am completely sane and aware of what I’m saying.”

“Your definition of ‘sane’ doesn’t really match to mine,” she snorts, giving him a quick ounce over to make sure that there’s no obvious sign of injury or some alien crap that might be screwing with his head. _Maybe_ he has been abducted by aliens and they sent a doppelganger to mess with her head. Well, so long as they don’t give the original back—

“Come on, Simmons,” he sighs. “You work with insane stuff all the time, this isn’t _that_ weird.”

“Telling me that the whole reality I live in isn’t _real_ isn’t weird?” she echoes. She should probably call for help, get someone to take the nutcase away from her. Jemma was also under the impression that he was under explicit orders to avoid them all if possible: since _when_ can he freely follow her around, let alone taunt her with this insanity?

“What I got from Fitz’s explanation is that it’s some memory of a random day at the office and you are stuck in it. Over and over again,” Ward supplies, with a shrug.

“Oh, in that case,” she replies, sarcastically, before shaking her head and deciding to move past him: she’ll go somewhere crowded and hopefully he’ll let it go. She’ll notify Coulson, though: if Ward has gone more insane than he previously was, it might be preferable to stop bringing him on mission.

“Wait, wait—” he says, quickly, grabbing her arm to prevent her from leaving. She glares at him and he makes sure to let it go, raising his hands up for good measure. “Look,” he continues. “I get it sounds insane, just— can you try to think about it for minute?”

“I _am_ thinking,” she replies. “Why would they even send _you_ of all people—”

“For one, I volunteered,” he shrugs. “Not to mention that this thing could fry my brain any minute, and the other two people in that room were Coulson and Fitz. Coulson is the boss and Fitz needed to make this whole thing work— also, he didn’t appreciate much the idea of plugging Coulson in and being stuck with me.”

“Alright, that— sort of makes sense,” she concedes, after a few seconds. Well, him volunteering doesn’t, but still. He could be lying. “Everything else is still insane.”

Ward stares at her for a few moments, then he takes a sharp breath, shaking his head.

“Okay, don’t believe me? Fine,” he says, holding his hand up to warn that he means no harm – not that she’s inclined to _believe_ him – before taking out a gun and handing it to her, handle first. “Shoot me.”

“ _What_?” she asks, baffled.

“Shoot me,” he repeats, shoving the gun into her hands and stepping back to make a better target. “It won’t do anything, because this isn’t _real_.”

“Have you finally gone completely insane?” she asks, as he stands there with his arms open as an invitation.

“Oh, come on, I’m an asshole, just shoot me. We both know you want to.”

“Stop tempting me,” she warns. This guy belongs in an mental institution, not running around with easy access to guns and employed on missions where people’s lives depend on him.

He sighs theatrically in frustration, and, as he quickly approaches her, Jemma takes an automatic step back, cursing herself for not yelling for help the exact moment he started talking. The only thing Ward does, though, it taking back the gun.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll do it myself.”

Before Jemma can even _think_ of a reply, he has stepped away from her once again to shoot himself right in the chest. Her scream comes out when the damage is done, and it’s only when she takes a leap forward, eyes and hands immediately rushing to the wound, that she realizes that there actually _isn’t_ any damage.

Well, his shirt is ruined, there’s that. But there’s no blood, no pain— when she looks up to him, he looks as healthy as ever and he’s showing off his ‘I told you so’ face.

“See?” he empathises, as Jemma shakes her head in disbelief and goes to back to inspecting the supposed wound, still finding no damage at all. She even raises his shirt up to be sure – to which he makes a joke she completely ignores –, and there’s _nothing_.

Yet she heard the gunshot, and the gun was real and loaded, she held it in her own hands, it was a standard SHIELD weapon like so many she’s seen recently— _yet there’s no wound_.

“Do you believe me now?” he asks, his tone somehow gentler.

Jemma frowns, her brain scrambling for some other explanation. In the end, she can only shake her head slightly and take a step back from him, her eyes still darting to his chest. “Let’s suppose I do,” she says. “What would you have me do?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I was only told to tell you what’s going on and that you had to wake yourself up.”

“Wake myself up,” she echoes, quietly. “Of course, that’s totally normal—” she mumbles, with a sigh. But, well, he _did_ just shoot himself in the chest with no consequences whatsoever.

She tries to pinch herself as hard as she can a couple of times, and it doesn’t work. She tries to _order_ herself to wake up, and it still doesn’t work.

“Alright,” she says, raising her eyes on Ward, who has been letting her try without interrupting or commenting. “Tell me about where I am. _If_ you are telling the truth, somewhere in my head I should remember it. Maybe that’s the cue I need.”

“Uh, okay,” he begins, clicking his tongue as he leans back against a table. “It’s— _gloomy_ —” he announces, with a shrug and barely concealed amusement, to which Jemma responds with an eye-roll. “—there are neon lights, one door, no windows, four beds, a fuckton of big machines— and an evil scientist very much dead on the floor. You’re welcome.”

She fixes him with an unamused look. “What does _he_ look like?”

“Bold, scrawny, pale as hell, round glasses—”

At that, something just _clicks_ in Jemma’s head: she remembers the feeling of straps on her arms and legs, holding her down as a bold man with round glasses bent over her to do something with her head, his whistling sending shivers down her spine—

A few moments later, she’s taking a sharp breath, shooting up in a sitting position, Coulson beside her immediately reaching for her shoulders to try and calm her heavy breaths.

“It’s alright,” he assures, smiling comfortingly as he rubs her shoulders. “You’re safe now, it’s okay.”

Her head feels like it’s _exploding_ , her eyes burn and her mind is trying to reconcile herself not remembering _months_ of her life to herself now, and she can only thank god that she only remembers the day that Ward appeared and not all the identical copies before or— shit.

She quickly turns around to the beds that she remembers being on her left, and there she finds Fitz standing beside the machinery that caused all this, looking at her with his face twisted in relief, and Ward one bed away from her, apparently still under.

 _This thing could fry my brain any minute_ —

She curses under her breath, her heart racing in her chest as she tries to jump off her bed, ignoring Coulson’s request to stay put for a second and battling the dizziness that overcomes her as soon as her feet are on the ground. She _knows_ that there isn’t much that she can do from out there, that the only way to wake him up is from within, but she still has to try _something_ , because whatever it is that they have now took weeks and weeks of baby-steps to rebuild, it grew right under her nose even as she fought it with all her being because she hated the idea of being fooled _twice_ by the same man, yet she feels it in her bones that she _can’t_ lose it. This idiot is _not_ dying for—

Ward comes to with a sudden intake of air, sitting up the way she did and looking very disoriented for a few seconds.

Jemma, leaning half on the bed next to his and half on Coulson, lets out a relieved laugh, which attracts Ward’s attention and earns her a grin.

“Look at that, it did work,” he comments, his eyes not leaving hers. “Who would have thought?”

Jemma just sighs, her lips still twisted in a smile as Coulson helps her sit on the bed she was leaning on and she tries to allow herself to calm down a little, before her arteries explode.

“Good job, Ward,” Coulson says, as soon as Jemma is comfortably seated, reaching for Ward’s shoulder to squeeze it.

“Boss,” he acknowledges, with a brief nod.

Coulson then leaves to make sure that Daisy and May managed to take care of all the soldiers and to let them know that everything worked out, which leaves Fitz to fuss over her, even as she tries to make him understand that she’ll likely be just fine.

Next to her, still sitting because he’s probably still feeling a bit messed up too, Ward keeps staring at her, smiling with barely concealed relief.


End file.
